The New Kid
by The Blue Fenix
Summary: In 1999, a different Middleman desperately needs some well-trained backup. But his leading candidate, a semi-disgraced ex-SEAL, wants nothing to do with him.
1. Chapter 1

The New Kid

Traditionally, Middlemen preferred to see potential apprentices in life-or-death situations before making any kind of job offer. Nothing could substitute for getting a firsthand look at him (or her, the Middleman amended) under the gun. Now he took a deep breath and waited for the right psychological moment before he stepped in.

A bar-room game of eight-ball wasn't anything like stressful enough to make that call. But it was a start. The Middleman got his bad leg under him and moved forward as his candidate sank the last ball.

The Middleman said a name. He didn't offer his own in return. "Nice grouping." The kid's eyes barely flickered up from the table. If he recognized the reference he didn't care. "Can I play? Twenty dollars a ball." He got a noncommittal noise back that he took as a yes.

'Kid' shouldn't have been the right word. The younger man was a bit past twenty-six, and had spent most of his adult life in the physical and emotional pressure cooker of the Navy's SEAL program. It still fit. Wide-eyed, a bit of a snub nose, clear unlined features. He'd probably been carded the first time he'd come to the bar. One of the snapshots in his file, from before the trouble, had caught a radiant, guileless grin that made him look like a very tall twelve. _I don't know if you can get all that back, but I think the job could save your life._

The kid looked thinner across the chest and arms than he had in his last military photos. The muscle mass hadn't gone slack but it was reduced, bones showing a little at wrists and elbows. He couldn't be making much pool sharking, even though he didn't seem to be drinking it. The one beer on the corner of the table was missing so little it was probably evaporation. He wasn't smoking, either. He hadn't smoked before his almost-honorable discharge from the SEALs, but ten weeks was plenty of time for a motivated man to pick up bad habits. If he was trying the self-destructive route, he was picky about means.

But he hadn't done anything _else_, either. Even with his Navy record grubby around the edges, the SEAL name and skills could have made him several kinds of living. Or an ordinary job; his military-legal troubles were settled. Instead, he'd gotten a by-the-week hotel room all of fifty miles down the coast from his old base. Just far enough that he didn't expect to see familiar faces, the Middleman judged.

The older man sank two shots in a row. It was a trivial feat of hand-eye coordination for someone with his training. He suspected the same of his opponent. Purposely missed on the next shot, because standing still hurt his leg more than moving around. "Your turn."

The former SEAL aimed three shots with machine-like accuracy before he looked up. "You were in here last night, and Wednesday, but you're not from around here. And you seem unusually interested in pool." A pause. "If that's a pass, I'd feel terrible breaking your other leg."

"You and me both." That fight wouldn't be a foregone conclusion even now; he'd learned a lot from Sensei Ping. But no need to get off-topic. "I want to talk to you. I need your help."

The light brown eyes didn't react. "If you're a reporter? Not going to feel terrible at all."

The Middleman fell back on borrowed words. "Reputation is what other people think about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."

That started a crack in the younger man's armor of indifference. His expression was human for a second, and hurting. "I'm screwed either way." The kid shut down again, fixed his eyes back on the pool table. "Look, you're not the first with a sales pitch. You're about the fifth. 'International consultants.' 'Private offensive and defensive operations.' I'm not a mercenary."

_What are you, that's the question._ "Neither am I. But it's an absorbing job, lots of variety. Tonight -- you notice it's full moon? -- it's about somebody's escaped pet wolf. Captive-raised, so it has no fear of human beings. There's also reason to think it might be rabid. I need to take this thing down tonight. I could use backup."

A one-sided sneer. It didn't suit the kid at all. "Because nobody does animal control for a _living_. That's the stupidest story I've ever heard."

"And yet it's true." _All but one adjective._ "Let me put it this way, kid. You've got skills that are practically unique. I want to give you a chance to use them for the good of mankind." The kid's lip curled still more at the dramatic wording. "Try it once. It might be interesting."

No answer. The Middleman tightened the screws. "Or you can get yourself a couple of hundred dollars sharking pool. And come back next night and do it again. And again. What could I have up my sleeve worse than that?"

That argument, for all the wrong reasons, tipped the balance. "Interesting? I'll hold you to that." The kid put down his pool cue.

-----------------

The Middleman had rented a local vehicle, a tall pickup with four wheel drive. He didn't relax when his candidate got into the truck with him. Plenty of other hurdles, long- and short-term alike. He opened a metal box under the seat. "Some basic equipment. This is a communicator." He handed over a bulky watch. The kid put it on with no great interest.

"And general safety precautions." A semi-auto pistol. That tapped into the kid's professionalism. He checked the action, the clip, took a round out of the chamber for a closer look. The weight wasn't too different from a standard full-metal-jacket cartridge. If he'd noticed it was unusually shiny for steel, he didn't remark on it. He examined the firing pin in a bit more detail, looked across. "It works," the Middleman said. "Would you like to shoot some tin cans before we hit the woods?"

Shrug. "You didn't mention your name."

_And here's the first hurdle now._ "I'm just the Middleman. That's the way it works. In my job you give up everything. Medals, rank, glory. Buddies to tell you you're a hero." The younger man's eyes closed. "Future, past. Your name. Your life, eventually. And it can be a pretty short eventually. Not many of us are as lucky as I was." The Middleman shifted his bad leg until the pain showed.

The sneer came back. "Sounds like you have a recruiting problem. Want to hear why?"

"Fortunately, we only need two at a time. A Middleman, and a trainee learning the ropes until he moves up."

The real ... the _previous_ Middleman had put this kid on the trainee replacement list right after his dismissal from the SEALs. That Middleman's then-apprentice had been an active participant in the process, between rounds of surgery. Neither of them expected him to survive his wounds. _And then when I did, we thought I'd be the equivalent of medically discharged._ Until his boss hadn't come back from a mission. Then the job was his, healthy or not. As far as he knew, he'd been the first Middleman to take the oath lying flat on his back in traction.

The previous Middleman had put this kid far down in the stack of possibles. His physical skills were top notch. On the pure combat level, Sensei Ping would mostly be polishing rough edges. And he tested smart, which wasn't guaranteed in a throat-cutter. More than one of his Navy commanders -- not the last one, obviously -- had tried to talk him into Officer Candidate School. But the previous Middleman worried about the kid's psych profile. He'd never put the ex-SEAL higher than fourth on the list.

That Middleman was in top shape himself, able to kick any extraterrestrial, extra-dimensional, extra-whatever butts that required it. The current model needed backup much more urgently.

Drop more clues. "Before I was the trainee, I was a police detective. Chicago. Homicide. One of my cases got complicated five years ago. My Middleman saved my life, and I wound up working for him."

A shred more interest from the kid. "So you've got a boss in the background?"

"Not any more." The Middleman was certain of that, if nothing else. "Line of duty."

The kid couldn't, or wouldn't, sneer at that. "Okay then." Settled back and waited for something to happen.

The Middleman gritted his teeth. _God save your soul, kid, what are you using for brains? I didn't give you anything like enough proof for you to trust me._ Though indifference was a more accurate word. The Middleman wanted to shake some sense into him. And make him go back to eating properly. _Stick to business. Mother-henning won't help him; having a purpose might._

The Middleman had chosen his ambush site carefully. The smallish town melted into small, shabby roadside farmhouses and finally into dense pine and oak woods packed with underbrush. He'd found a clearing the day before, a hundred yards of blackberry thorn and poison ivy from the shoulder of the state highway. He pulled over. "Right through there. If you'll carry this stuff," A scoped rifle, and a rugged plastic box designed for fishing tackle, "It'll be a big help."

The Middleman had a leg brace, but it made him conspicuous and took away what little knee mobility he had left. Within ten yards he wished he'd worn it. Every badly healed break, every surgical pin, was tracing itself in three-dimensional layers of pain. _Damn humid coastal climate_. He thought that the kid, following him down the trail, hadn't noticed. But when a muscle spasm threw him off balance toward a thorn bush, a sudden grip on his upper arm stopped him falling. "Thanks."

"You're sure you're the right guy to chase a rabid wolf?" A note of concern alongside the sarcasm.

"It's my responsibility. I did say I could use help."

The Middleman had left firewood stacked and ready at the clearing. When they reached it, he started the fire with a gadget that wasn't strictly a lighter.

"Isn't your furry buddy afraid of fire, either?" the kid said dryly.

"Not one bit." The Middleman leaned back against a tree. "It'll come straight here." He threw a palm-sized cloth packet into the heart of the fire. "Scent attractant. Like deer musk, only more so." His magic consultant had prepared the mix. The only ingredient he was sure of was two ounces of his own blood. _It would come here from the ends of the earth_. Even the human form of the thing would be drawn in. "Now we wait."

"What for?"

"Moonrise."

The kid was starting to draw conclusions in the face of all logic. "You don't mean to see by."

The Middleman took several more items from the tackle box and distributed them in his pockets. "That would be dumb of me. Night-vision gear would make a lot more sense."

"You're a nut." Calmly. A crippled nut ten years older and two inches shorter didn't frighten the kid. "Bye. I hope you're good at hitchhiking. I'll leave your truck downtown someplace."

_Bad idea._ He wanted to test the kid's mettle and existential coping skills. Having him wander through the woods distracted and off guard wasn't in the plan. A thread of the sympathetic magic went back to him, too; the Middleman could feel the beast coming closer. Fast. "If I'm crazy, how do I know you signed an organ donor card two days ago?"

He couldn't read the kid's expression in the bad light, but the sudden stillness was just as revealing. "You could have done that any time in your military career. You never got around to it," the Middleman said. "Sudden change in pattern like that, it looks like you've made up your mind. Whether you're waiting for something to live for, or something to die from."

The Middlewatch put out four insistent beeps. "Also, moonrise."

"Good luck with that." Flat distaste, protecting the kid from believing a word. He started down the trail back to the highway.

The Middleman got upright again. "Hey!" That wasn't the safest direction. The creature's transformation would be instantaneous this time. And in its real form, it covered ground tremendously fast. The magic had fixed the Middleman as its only true target, but it wouldn't ignore someone right in its path. "Listen." He staggered on. "I don't care if you believe me or not..."

A growl like, literally, nothing on Earth. Subsonics that bypassed the generations of humans armed with steel or stone or fire, promised the monkey brain instant death.

Pistol shots, measured not panicked. The kid had kept his head. But he wasn't getting results. The growling went on.

The Middleman had his own handgun out. Clubbed down at a surgical scar just above his knee; blood flowed. The growl paused at the new scent. "Over _here_, fleabag!" He knew where to aim, but he'd only get one chance.

Something twice the weight of a man slammed into him, square against the open wound. His vision grayed out. _Sorry, kid_.

--------


	2. Chapter 2

None of the classic drifting down a long, dark tunnel. The Middleman was rocketing upward like an express elevator, and everything still hurt.

His head banged into something. The dull ache counteracted some of the pain from his leg. Steadied himself against a rough surface. When he could see again the Middleman found himself sitting on an oak branch thicker than his arm. Twelve or fifteen feet off the ground. The kid crouched on another branch a quarter of the tree trunk away, breathing hard, eyes wide. He was in even better shape than the Middleman had realized, getting them both up to safety with no advance notice like that. "Nice one," the older man said dizzily. "Tarzan would be proud." _I'll introduce you next time he's in town_.

"There are no. Such things. As werewolves." The kid seemed personally offended.

"You may have been misinformed. The good news is their body shape is maxed out for running, not for jumping." The Middleman looked down. Three hundred lean pounds of hair-covered muscle, its body too wolfish to get up beyond a half-crouch. It showed two-inch fangs in frustration. Only the eyes still looked human, and they were insane with blood lust. Obsidian-sharp claws ringed paws the size of dinner plates. Which were treading over ...

"Oh, phooey." _Too clever for my own good_. "Kid, next time leave me and grab the rifle."

_"Next time?"_ It took the kid a few seconds to find more words. "Fuck."

"Now, now. Profanity cheapens the soul and weakens the mind. Anyway, dirty words wear out fast in this job." The Middleman got a better look at him, stopped being facetious. One leg of the kid's heavy jeans was shredded at the knee. "Did it get you? Teeth or claws or some of both?"

"What?"

"_Report_, sailor." The Middleman snapped. "Did teeth break skin at any point?"

"Sir." The familiar routine seemed to steady the kid. He checked his torn clothes, showed three shallow parallel scratches. "Just claws, I think." His eyes moved. "But it got you."

The Middleman looked down. Four separate straight-in punctures, two on each side of the calf muscle in the healthier part of his bad leg. The rest of the leg was demanding so much attention that he hadn't noticed the new injury. He kept his swearing internal, since he was trying to set a good example. "Yep. You're right." He found a pre-loaded hypodermic in one of his jacket pockets, pulled off the cap with his teeth. Injected himself in the muscle just above the bite site, one more entry in tonight's Things That Are Not Fun list.

"Colloidal silver in a neutral saline solution," the Middleman said. "Alternative-medicine types drink the stuff, think it cures anything from hangnails to cancer. It doesn't. But it can burn out a werewolf infection if you catch it early enough."

The beast was clawing steadily at the base of the tree. It wasn't going to sever the trunk or dig up major roots anytime soon, but the Middleman knew it wouldn't give up.

The kid looked down too. "You said, animal control. Is that what you're here for, giving him his shots?"

The Middleman shook his head. "Way too late for that poor bastard. The most it'll do is kill him. This isn't his first full moon, it's his second. Two months ago when he got bitten, the ... the _old_ Middleman got his sire but missed him. Working without backup. Last month ... I'd gotten promoted but I couldn't walk. No use to anyone. Fido here was on the run. He killed six people at a truck stop. None of them converted; they were ripped to shreds. Maybe you saw it on the news. The cops blamed a drug gang juiced to the eyeballs on PCP."

His head dipped in weariness. "Not Fido. His name was Bill Mercer, which we didn't find out in time to do him any good. He didn't know what was happening, but he had gut instincts good enough to stay away from his wife and daughters. He's as much a victim as that six-course meal. Those deaths are on me. I can't do this job alone. I'll never be healthy enough again to do it alone. I need you, kid."

"You really are desperate." Almost a joke. The danger was bringing the kid to life, in a manic sort of way. _Something to live for, or something to die from..._ His voice was calm under the energy, a professional on the job. "So those were silver bullets?" Nod. "I emptied the clip. I swear I hit it at least three times."

"You probably did, but it's a tough shot even with silver. You have to peg the heart, like a vampire, or the brain, like a zombie."

The kid paused, visibly putting "vampires and zombies exist too?" away for later. Or already having an accurate guess. "Thanks for the damn briefing."

"You weren't going to believe me until you'd seen it; I needed that startle reaction. I admit I overdid it. Listen." The Middleman's voice had gone flat. "You want a briefing, here we go. If this goes bad, that new watch is going to start talking to you. A crabby lady named Ida -- think of her as James Bond's whole support staff from M to Q. She'll talk you through the rest. A lot of your SEAL training will apply. You're getting all this pretty fast, yeah, but some of us have had less warning."

The kid's expression went stony. "I'll help you tonight, sure." He looked down at the beast, a brief wry twist to his mouth; that part was hardly optional. "But I don't want your job."

"You'd be good. Maybe the best, and that's in high-powered company." The limiting factor here wasn't the kid, or the werewolf. It was how long he could keep a grip on the tree before passing out. "You qualify, no question. Not just the skills. The way you protected your team knowing what it would cost you. I wish I could give you more time to sort yourself out but hey, deadline. Werewolf."

"What fun." A cool-eyed assessment of the tactical situation; the ex-SEAL didn't trust him to give orders. "The rifle's loaded with silver too?" On the ground below them, directly underfoot for the werewolf. Getting their hands on it would be a non-trivial exercise all by itself.

"I'd be pretty stupid otherwise." Possibly a bad time for that wording. "Yeah. Silver bullets."

"Can you work your way over ..." The kid stopped. Their oak tree was an easy reach from two or three others, but only for an agile man with a strong grip. "Can you get a distraction going over that direction? Throw branches or rocks or something. We have to move that thing before anybody's getting the gun back."

The Middleman shook his head. "It doesn't think _like_ a human, but the wolf form is pretty smart. Anyway, we've met before. It knows the smell of my blood. If the targets split up, there's no question who it'll go for."

The briefing the kid had demanded; all true, but with a sting in its tail. The Middleman watched his reaction. He didn't see the slightest hint of 'better you than me.'

"You'll have to be anywhere but here to draw it off, then," the kid said. "I can get you into a different tree. Probably. Can you climb part way down, draw its attention?"

"Down, yes." The Middleman looked at the drop. "Climb, not so much. But it's a good plan. I can make the horizontal shift; not a thing wrong with my arms. We can do this, as a team." He took a breath. "But first I want your word -- talk to Ida. Work with her, even if it's only temporary."

The kid frowned. "Or else what?"

"Or else it's going to be a long damn night in this tree until _you_ think of a plan."

Sour smile. "Profanity cheapens the soul."

"Mine would get you change for a nickel right now. Do we have a deal?"

The kid was suspicious. "I'm not promising anything blind."

"You see? That's part of why you qualify. Promising and lying about it didn't occur to you."

An angry head shake, rejecting the praise. "Start making sense." The Middleman kept staring at him. A less bullish "how long is temporary?"

"A month. Four weeks." _If you're going to get the hunger for this calling at all, that'll be plenty of time. _ "You had other plans?"

"I didn't plan on getting killed tonight, if that's what you mean."

"You won't." The Middleman raised an eyebrow in the kid's direction. "And?"

"Okay, then." Clearly humoring him. "_If_ your plan works and we don't get eaten by a werewolf. Then I will spend the next month helping you and this Ida person with your _golly gosh-darned_ job before I tell you what to do with it."

"Thanks, kid. That's a real load off my mind." Even the leg hurt less. The Middleman got a grip on a higher branch with both hands, levered himself up with his good knee. "I'll keep its attention off you. You get down, get the rifle, get the shot off. Remember, brain or heart shots. That rifle has six rounds in it."

"Any other advice?"

"Don't get bit," the Middleman said blandly. He began to work himself out from the tree trunk, arms only. Below them, the wolf raised its head. Moved a little away from the base of the tree, following the Middleman, but still in easy leaping range of both humans if they'd been on the ground.

"You too." The kid looked down, distracted. "You said it's smart. Could it understand what we were saying to each other all this time?"

"Doesn't matter. I can hold its attention." The branch started to bend slightly as the Middleman moved closer to the end. "You won't get a second chance, so move fast. Ida, did you get all that?" A squawk from his Middlewatch, but he'd taken the precaution of turning the speaker all the way down. "Code forty-seven, Ida."

"What's a …" The kid stopped. Stared.

The Middleman was well out of arm's reach. And this branch could never hold both of them. He held eye contact for a heartbeat. "Finish the job." Shifted outward still further like a child on a swing. Let go at the point of highest momentum. He heard the wolf launch itself to meet him.

Reflex, crazily, had the Middleman twist in the air and land protecting his bad leg. More reflex rolled him onto his stomach, presenting solid back instead of underbelly to the beast's attack, arms shielding his head. Teeth aimed for his jugular closed in one upper arm. The crushing part of the bite hurt more than the fangs. His vision started to darken. Being conscious hurt, but he fought to stay there.

Saw the kid land like a panther beside the rifle, bring it up smooth and quick. The shot tore bone at the heaviest part of the wolf's skull, the muscle-anchoring crest. Crushing and splintering, ripping away an ear. A mortal creature's brain would be pulped by hydrostatic shock but no silver stayed in the wound. The wolf shook its head and charged the new target.

The kid's younger, faster reflexes swung the rifle around. The werewolf's jaws closed on the wooden stock instead of on him. His two arms pushing against the wolf's entire body; it couldn't last.

The Middleman dragged himself forward on his elbows. The kid registered what he was doing, gave way a calculated fraction so the wolf's back was to the wounded man. Another half a body length. Took the rest of the colloidal silver hypodermics out of his pocket in one fistful. The kid exerted all his strength and drove the creature back a few inches. The Middleman stabbed it in the thigh with all the needles at once.

The werewolf screamed like a human and went into a whole-body seizure. Its weight came down on the Middleman; he passed out.

The Middleman woke to the sound of the kid's voice, cursing steadily and creatively. _Like a sailor, in fact. _

His bad leg ached, with a core of sharp pain that meant he'd knocked something new loose. "Are any bones showing?" he asked mildly. Opened his eyes for an assessment. The pain in his leg was almost an old friend; it was the bitten arm he didn't want to think about. The kid had covered it with a tidy field dressing. The Middleman was propped half-upright at the base of a tree, both coats wrapped around him.

"That's your plan?" the kid demanded. "Get eaten?"

"It wouldn't have worked the other way around. And you notice, I _didn't_ get eaten." The Middleman pulled his bandaged arm in front of him, thumbed a switch on the watch. "Ida. Emergency evac." Glanced up. The werewolf lay stiff and contorted in the dirt a few yards away. "Also, evidence disposal. Can you give me an ETA?"

"The east coast? Inside of three hours."

He breathed out. "Understood. Thank you, Ida. I've got someone I'd like you to meet, incidentally."

Nothing to do, then, but lie back and wait. "I can't point a gun at you and make you save the world," he told the kid. "Obviously. But I hope you'll keep that promise. You did good tonight. I don't know if anybody else alive could have gotten that shot off while I was still breathing." Tried not to resent it. "You're fast on your cues, too. Listen to Ida, she knows her stuff. She looks like a crabby aunt and dresses like a rainbow threw up on her, but she's really a re-purposed Skandrian battle droid. Sometimes I think she just lets us fight the bad guys so she doesn't have to miss her soap operas. Don't tell her I said that. You'll be quite a team."

The kid sat down across from him. With his anger and surliness stripped away, he looked much younger. And desperately empty. "You're hiding something. Again. Let's have it."

"It's not your fault. I'm the one who used the colloids as a weapon. But I'm just as dead as if he'd gutted me." The Middleman shrugged. "I said the shots could stop a werewolf infection if you get them early enough. _Early_ is inside the first hour. Those hypos were all I had. And it's not the kind of thing you can find at a small-town pharmacy on a Saturday night. And Ida will get here at least two hours too late. So hi there, sorry to be in a rush – tomorrow you're the Middleman. Or no-one is."

He wet his lips. The new sharp pain in the bitten arm was getting to him. "Centuries, I don't even know how _many_ centuries. The chain of Middlemen has never broken. You don't owe me a thing. I've got no way and no right to stop you walking away. But if you do, I'm the one who let it break."

The kid stood up. _Oh_. The Middleman let his eyes fall closed. "Then leave me the damn rifle."

The ex-SEAL crossed the few steps to where the rifle leaned on another tree. Tossed a small object into the Middleman's lap. "I don't see what good that'll do."

He looked down at a long-rifle cartridge. Or most of one. The brass was roughly pried open, dribbling grains of gunpowder. The solid-silver bullet was completely gone. More mangled cartridges followed, all six of them.

The Middleman pulled at the bandage around his arm. Blood flowed sluggishly. The wounds weren't closed very well. Not with six long rounds of silver stuffed into the largest holes. "You..." The Middleman tried to kick him in the ankle, missed by a yard. _Just what I need, a smartass. A __smart__ smartass._

_Thanks, God. That's just what I do need._

"Medicine worked as a weapon. It was worth trying whether a weapon could work as medicine." The explanation sounded sheepish; the first emotional reaction he'd seen from the kid besides anger and disdain. "It's not like I could let you die for pissing me off." Quietly. "You seem to have something work taking risks for. I … used to."

The older man held out his hand. "Nice to meet you. I'm the Middleman. I fight comic-book evil. Want in?"

The kid took it cautiously. "We'll see."


End file.
